Imagine the year is 1994. Boards of trustees gather in retreats, encouraged to think strategically. One of the nation’s greatest economic expansions is well underway. The Internet has made its debut. Democracy is spreading round the globe as communism has fallen. The future is rich with possibilities. Where do we want our school to be in 20 years? How shall we use our independence, our freedom to be creative, to offer our families the very best?
No doubt boards — and faculties and families — had heady conversations in those days. No doubt schools adopted ambitious strategic plans. But 20 years later, it is sobering to recognize how reality subsequently played out — and often not as anyone actually planned it.
Over the ensuing 20 years, for instance, tuitions at NAIS-member day schools increased 167 percent, from an average of $8,950 to $23,883. The economic boom of the 1990s did not last, and median household income increased only 66 percent over the same period — less than 40 percent as fast as tuitions were rising. Tuitions at NAIS-member schools leaped from 29 percent of the median family’s income to 47 percent — pricing families of average means well out of the market. Even among the top 5 percent of households, tuition increases outstripped gains in earnings by almost 50 percentiles.
Given the 20-year divergence of tuition and income, it’s not surprising that families across the country have displayed less interest in independent schools in recent years. From 2009 to 2014, inquiries per school are down 14 percent, applications are down 9 percent, and enrollment is down 4 percent (a figure bolstered by higher acceptance rates). Schools have aggressively plowed some of the tuition rise into financial aid, but this hasn’t prevented the ebb in independent school popularity.
Suffice it to say, nobody in 1994 planned for independent school budgets to shift so fundamentally their relationship to family budgets. And this is just one of the factors that challenges the independent school community today. Over 20 years, through unanticipated events and school decisions made year by year — and not according to long-range or visionary plans — many NAIS-member schools find themselves on trajectories that do not project easily 20 more years down the road.
How might schools get to 2034 in better condition than they may find themselves in 2014? First, by recognizing the adage "The best laid plans... often go awry." This may be true more in schooling than in any other field. Second, by pushing for smart change even in the face of such uncertainty.
It sounds harsh to make the observation, but it is true that schools do not look much different today than they did 50 years ago or longer. Students still spend most of their days in classrooms with children of the same age and a teacher. Students move annually through an age-graded educational program from kindergarten through grade 12, where a high school diploma is issued. When it comes to our children, caution is surely warranted. We do not want schools experimenting and lurching from one unproven idea to the next.
But we do want progress. And we live in times that seem to demand it more than ever. It is right that we ask ourselves hard questions today about schools of the future. We are well into the 21st century. It’s long past time we stop speaking about it as some future state. It is upon us, with its demands for new student skills, new student knowledge of the global community, and new student facility with technology and other matters technical.
In particular, the demands of the 21st century require us to ask hard questions about the most important element of schooling: our teachers. And this is where I recommend schools start their 20-year plans — if they want the best chance of thriving in a challenging future.
The last 20 years have not been kind to teachers, at least financially. In NAIS-member schools, while tuitions were rising 167 percent, median teacher salaries rose only 80 percent. Our teachers also lost ground to teachers in public schools. Twenty years ago, median salaries in NAIS-member and public schools were identical. But public school salaries increased 100 percent in the ensuing 20 years, now outstripping the NAIS median by several thousand dollars. Starting salaries differ by about $2,000. Differences in salaries say nothing about differences in medical and retirement benefits, which are generally substantial.
It’s safe to say that not a single independent school envisioned a future in 1994 that had its teachers falling behind their public school counterparts in compensation or receiving a substantially reduced share of increasing school resources. But that is what happened, on average.
There is nothing more important to the success of a school than the quality of its teachers. It is not a cliché or hyperbole to say that teachers can be life-changing. We hear so often these days about the rise in income inequality in this country. We have already noted here the progress of the top 5 percent of households as compared with the median. The New York Times recently reported on its front page the results of a study led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty that traced the earnings of every child born in the United States in 1980 and 1981 ahead 30 years. The report showed that children born into the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution have only an 8 percent chance of making it to the top 20 percent. That’s half the probability in some Western European countries.
Lousy odds. But the report notes that chances improve if a child has a strong education. And that begins with great teachers. Chetty is among the nation’s most influential education economists, and a few years earlier the Times ran a front-page story on another of his studies.1 This one traced lifetime earnings back to students’ kindergarten experience. His thesis: Who teaches you in kindergarten can change your lifetime earnings significantly. The effects of teachers are that long-lasting.
Researchers have actually been documenting the precise effects of quality teachers for some time now — for about 20 years to be exact. Once standardized testing — problems and all — became common in public schools, it became possible to examine student progress in math and reading skills over time, classroom by classroom. For two decades, researchers have been applying ever more refined methods to disentangle the effects of teachers from family and student background, peers, and other school influences. The results are remarkably consistent. Students gain about 50 national percentiles on average if they are taught by a highly effective teacher three years in a row. That’s a lot more hopeful than the 8 percent chance of progressing economically — and, ultimately, the key to students having the chance at a quality college education and a bright future.
To be clear, quality teaching is about much more than improving math and reading skills. It is about higher-order thinking. It is about creativity, invention, and entrepreneurship. It is about nurturing students and educating them heart and soul. It is about believing in them and helping them believe in themselves.
In the future, it is also about new ways of teaching. The Internet is no longer in its infancy. In 1994, few could imagine the quantity and quality of knowledge and skills that students can acquire working online. Students can now go to school full-time online, and about 700,000 already do so. Students can take individual courses online, with multimedia, interactive, asynchronous content and with live teachers individually or in virtual classrooms. More than 10 percent of public high school students take at least one course online. Among college students, 30 percent have at least one course as part of the bachelor’s program. In the independent school world, online programs such as the Online School for Girls, the Online School for Boys, the Global Online Academy, and the Stanford University Online High School provide courses and diploma programs geared to the expectations of independent school families — and are growing rapidly.
Teachers are increasingly bringing online resources into their classes within traditional schools. This is likely the biggest wave of instructional change in the future. Teachers need not directly transmit knowledge or hone skills — at least to the extent once necessary. Students can accomplish much of this online. Teachers, on the other hand, can devote more time to helping students apply their knowledge and skills to novel problems, to real-world challenges, and to group projects that cut across disciplines.
As teachers promote creativity, problem solving, collaboration, and other dispositions necessary for this century, their instruction will become a blend of online and in-person instruction. Teaching will no longer be confined to the classroom. Students will take more control over their own learning, and as they grow older, work more independently, often outside of traditional classrooms. As learning becomes more of a mix of experiences, teachers may work with more students than they do today. Schools may rely less on age-grading and more on individual student progress and competency to organize instruction.
And high-quality teachers will be the key to any and all innovations.
History suggests that, as schools embrace technology in more "disruptive" ways, the cost of schooling — to return to one of the main independent school challenges that arose in the past 20 years — may slow its once steady climb. Schools will become more efficient, educating students with increasing levels of success, by altering the blend of teachers and technology. At the same time, teachers will be better compensated because their roles will become more sophisticated and crucial.
It may well be 2034 before we know if education behaves like so many other industries that have been transformed for the better by technology. But whatever technological innovation holds, schools will be best served by focusing not on technology but on teaching and teachers. Schools that envision their futures founded on attracting, developing, and retaining the very best teachers are the schools whose best laid plans are least likely to go awry.
Note
1. Annie Lowrey, "Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain," New York Times, January 6, 2012.